The Cambridge Companion to Early Greek Philosophy

by A. A. Long

  Psycho-physical identity having been set aside, some looser connections between Democritus’ ethics and other areas of his thought may perhaps be discerned. In Taylor [423] I argued for a structural parallel between ethics and epistemology, a suggestion that still seems plausible to me. Another vague connection is with cosmology. It is not unreasonable to suppose that Democritus saw at least an analogy between the formation of worlds (kosmoi) from the primitive atomic chaos by the aggregation of atoms under the force of necessity and the formation of communities (also termed kosmoi, B258, 259) by individuals driven by necessity to combine in order to survive. It may also be (as suggested by, for example, Müller [496]) that the aggregation of like individuals to like, which is attested as operating in the formation of worlds (DK 67 A1.31), had some counterpart in the social sphere.

  NOTES

  A version of this chapter has already appeared as part of the chapter “Anaxagoras and the Atomists” in C. C. W. Taylor, ed. Routledge History of Philosophy, Vol. I, From the Beginning to Plato (London, 1997), and material from it also appears in The Atomists, text and translation by C. C. W. Taylor (Toronto, 1999). Permission from these publishers to reprint Mr Taylor’s work is gratefully acknowledged.

  1 For Democritus’ poetics, which falls outside the scope of this chapter, see Most in this volume p. 339.

  2 To adapt Aristotle’s example (Metaph. 1.4 985b18-19), AN differs from NA in ordering, and AN from AZ in orientation within a given ordering.

  3 While most of the ancient sources agree that atoms are too small to be perceptible, some late sources indicate that some atoms are very large (even on one account “as big as a world”). It seems to me most likely that the atomists held that, while there are atoms of all possible sizes (for the same reason that there are atoms of all possible shapes), all the atoms in our world are too small to be perceived. See Barnes [14] ch. 17 (b).

  4 For a full discussion of the atomists’ use of this principle, see S. Makin, Indifference Arguments (Oxford and Cambridge, MA, 1993).

  5 Plutarch states this maxim in what is presumably the atomists’ own terminology: “The thing no more is than the no-thing,” where “thing” represents the word den, an artificial formation specifically coined to contrast with mêden, “nothing,” itself etymologically equivalent to mêd’ hen “not one [sc. thing].”

  6 For a fuller discussion, see Sedley [409].

  7 On the nature of these, see p. 187.

  8 In Aristotle’s system natural motion is motion that is intrinsic to the nature of a thing of a certain kind, for example, it is natural for a stone to move downwards, that is, to fall to the earth when unsupported. Things may also be caused, by the exercise of external force, to move in ways contrary to their natural motion, for example, a stone may be thrown upwards. The atomists’ thesis that all atomic motion is the product of precedent atomic interaction, is thus in Aristotle’s terms equivalent to the thesis that all atomic motion is unnatural, a claim that he held to be incoherent (since the concept of unnatural motion presupposes that of natural motion).

  9 See Kline and Matheson [403] and Godfrey [404]. I. M. Bodnár, “Atomic Independence and Indivisibility,” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 16 (1998), 35–61, argues (at 49–53) that, rather than providing evidence for the actual views of the atomists, the texts of Philoponus are mere guesses prompted by his interpretation of the Aristotelian texts on which he is commenting.

  10 Restrictions of space preclude discussion of various questions about the nature of atoms that have been the subject of much scholarly dispute. The vexed question of whether atoms have weight is discussed by numerous writers, most fully by O’Brien [407], with cogent criticism by Furley [408]. On the questions of whether, and in what sense, atoms may be said to have parts, see for example, Barnes [14] ch. 17 (c) and Furley [400] ch. 6 and [99], ch. 9.3-4. I discuss these matters in my forthcoming commentary on the atomists, to be published by Toronto U.P. in the Phoenix Presocratics Series.

  11 On the absence of explicit evidence for the early Greek philosophers’ reflection on causal explanation, see Vegetti in this volume, Chapter 13.

  12 The best discussion of the fragment is Barnes [399], who, while finally opting for an agnostic stance, is more sympathetic to the view that Leucippus may have accepted universal teleology. The nonteleological interpretation that I propose is also maintained by McKirahan [10] 321–22.

  13 On the atomists’ theory a world order begins to form when some of the infinite mass of randomly jostling atoms form a circular eddy or swirl.

  14 The Greek of the last clause is epirysmiê hekastoisin hê doxis. I translate epirysmiê as an adjective, qualifying doxis (opinion), having the sense of “flowing in,” from the verb epirreô. That is the sense of the word (which is found only in this passage (quoted by Sextus M. VII. 137)) attested in the fifth century A.D. lexicon of Hesychius. On the other hand, rysmos (an Ionic form of rythmos) was an atomistic technical term for “shape” (Aristotle, Metaph. 1.4 985b15-16), and one of the titles preserved in Diogenes Laertius’ list of the works of Democritus (IX.47) is Peri ameipsirysmiôn On Changes of Shape, where ameipsirysmiê is a noun. Further, though the noun epirysmiê is not itself found, the verb epirrythmizein does occur (very rarely) in the sense of “alter.” Some scholars (including Guthrie [16] and Barnes [14]) therefore interpret the word here as a noun, a variant for ameipsirysmiê, giving the sense “opinion is a reshaping.” (H. de Ley, “ A critical note on Democritus fr. 7,” Hermes 97 (1969) 497–98 actually proposes emending Sextus’ text to read ameipsirysmiê.) The point of the fragment is the same on either interpretation, namely, that our opinions about the world are determined by the impact of the flow of atoms from objects around us on our receptive mechanisms. That impact, produced by the constant influx of atoms, produces constant alteration (reshaping) of those mechanisms. The alternative interpretations pick out different stages in the causal process; since the whole process is required for an account of opinion and its relation to the reality of things, nothing substantial hinges on the choice of interpretation.

  15 For instance, Barnes [14], ch. 24.

  16 For a similar view see McKim [417].

  17 See Taylor [423].

  18 For further discussion of Democritus’ psychology, see Laks in this volume, Chapter 12.

  19 For details see my forthcoming commentary.

  20 For a fuller discussion, see Kahn [416]. This valuable study identifies a number of areas, such as the conflict between reason and desire, in which Democritus’ thought shows significant similarities to, and contrasts with, the early views of Plato.

  21 While the relation between the concepts of conscience and of shame raises some intricate philosophical issues, I am not concerned to differentiate them, since the basic concept of self-reproach, which we find in the fragments, is common to the two.

  22 See Antiphon DK 87 B44; Critias DK 88 B25; Glaucon’s tale of Gyges’ ring in Plato’s Republic, 359b-360d; and Decleva Caizzi in this volume, Chapter 15. The text of Critias is translated in this volume p. 222.

  23 For a fuller discussion, see Procope [420], and for Democritean theology, see Broadie in this volume, p. 220.

  SARAH BROADIE

  10 Rational theology

  1. INTRODUCTION

  Ancient Greek philosophy arose in a culture whose world had always teemed with divinities. “Everything is full of gods,” said Thales (Aristotle De an. I.5, 411a8), and the earliest “theories of everything” were mythological panoramas such as Hesiod’s Theogony, in which the genealogy of the gods is also a story about the evolution of the universe. Hence when certain Greeks began to think about the physical world in a philosophical way, they were concerning themselves with matters which it was still quite natural to term “divine,” even in the context of their new scientific approach. Because of this, it is not entirely obvious where one should draw the line between the theology of the early Greek philosophers and their other achievements. But clarity is not served by class
ifying as “theological” every statement or view of theirs that features concepts of divinity. To theologize is not simply to theorize using such concepts in a nonincidental way. Rather, it is, for instance, to reflect upon the divine nature, or to rest an argument or explanation on the idea of divinity as such, or to discuss the question of the existence of gods, and to speculate on the grounds or causes of theistic belief.

  By these criteria, Hesiod’s Theogony is not a work of theology. Nor, however, are the physical theories of Anaximander, Anaxagoras, and Diogenes of Apollonia, who all apply epithets signifying divinity to their fundamental principle.1 Anaximander’s Infinite, in Aristotle’s words:

  … does not have an archê, but this seems to be the archê of the rest and to contain all things and steer all things, as all declare who do not fashion other causes aside from the Infinite … and this is divine.2 For it is deathless and indestructible, as Anaximander says and most of the natural philosophers (Phys. III 203b10-153).

  Diogenes of Apollonia, about a century and a half later, speaks in similar fashion of his own first principle, Intelligent Air (DK 64 B2-8). But in neither theory, it seems, is the divinity of the archê discussed or put to explanatory work. Anaximander’s Infinite is not said to be the first principle on the ground that it is divine, but to be divine because it is the primary physical principle. Diogenes does not equate his principle with intelligence because this is implied by its being divine, but because the order of the cosmos can only be explained as the work of intelligence. Both theories are convertible into proofs for the existence of a divine being, but nothing could be further from their authors’ minds than the need for any such proof. The question they ask is not “Does god exist?” or “What is god’s nature?” but “What is the basic principle of the cosmos?” As members of a certain philosophical tradition, they assume that there is such a principle; as products of their culture, they call whatever is fundamental to the cosmos “divine.” Much the same holds for the cosmic Mind which Anaxagoras postulated: “mixed with nothing, but all alone by itself” (DK 59 B12); not because it is divine – as if separateness befits divinity – but because only as separate can it perform its function of dividing things out. Anaxagoras is an interesting case, because there is reason to believe that nowhere in his book On nature does he actually speak of the cosmic Mind as “divine,” even though he uses language (“such as knows all things,” “controls all things,” and so on), that traditionally implies divinity. It may be that even though, as a matter of course, he shares the general cultural attitude, he excludes the explicit term from his cosmology because he sees it as adding nothing to his theory.

  Yet there can be no doubt that the identity at some level of description between divine reality and the subject matter of natural science shaped the course of early Greek philosophy in fundamental ways. This is true even when the level at which the identity holds lies below the horizon of the philosophers’ quest for specifically physical explanation, as in the cases mentioned above. We cannot dismiss the identity as an alien feature of these philosophers’ thoughts – dead weight from the past or a hollow form. This fails to account for the depth of solemnity with which they expound the nature of the basic principle – the deliberately crafted hymnic quality of their prose. And if Anaximander was carrying archaic lumber, this cannot explain how the identical burden could still be encumbering the late fifth-century Diogenes. We see the continuing of a tradition, but only because it was vigorously practised. A better theory is that the identity between gods and natural principles was never allowed to fade because it helped make sense of the philosophers’ deep commitment to the enterprise of scientific inquiry: an enterprise by no means always appreciated in the wider circles of their culture.

  The theistic framework affected not only the philosophers’ language, but their thought as well. It is natural, in seeking for causes of physical phenomena, to assume at first that whatever we identify as a cause needs no explanation itself. But something, S, which in one context figures as cause of P, may on further inquiry turn out to have “a life of its own,” that is, properties additional to those that shed light on P. Now such questions arise as, “What underlying nature explains the combination of all these properties in S?” and “Why does the combination give rise to P in some cases and not others?” What first appeared as an uncaused cause turns out to have causal roots itself. Acceptance that there need be no ultimates of explanation is a modern attitude that owes its existence to the emancipation of science from religion. But where the forces of nature are themselves felt to be divine, any theory identifying these forces stands forth as an ultimate explanation. For presumably nothing can be divine that is reducible to terms beyond itself. It follows, so far as the early Greek philosophers are concerned, that (as we would put it) the difference between metaphysical and empirical investigation remains unrecognised. Diogenes’ first principle, for example, is both what we breathe and something mysterious and sublime: part of nature and at the same time nature’s ground.4

  So far, we have mentioned philosophers whose work is not theological in the sense indicated in the first paragraph, although clearly it is of interest to the historian of theology. But it is not always easy to draw a line between philosophizing about god as such, and philosophizing about nature from a theistically charged perspective. Inquiry of the latter sort naturally generates questions for the former, and when the same philosopher engages in both (the prime example is Empedocles), the levels may combine in a single theory. The shift to theological reflection is inherently likely, since theistic religion naturally generates care about forms of expression. In the area of speech, reverence towards the god entails meticulous avoidance of possibly impious modes of utterance. This attitude was extended to the subject matter of natural philosophy. Thus when critical theology began, scientific theories about the divine were put forward as fruits of a search for piously appropriate discourse (and were usually accompanied by scathing denunciation of contrary views). It was this concern for pious speech that gave Xenophanes of Colophon a place in the history of Western philosophy, as the first to theologize against popular conceptions of the divine. His conception of god, though profound, lacks the theoretical richness of the conclusions reached by Heraclitus and, later, Empedocles, who were responding to pressures from philosophy itself, including that of Xenophanes. Empedocles is a complicated figure, since according to the account offered here, his theory of the universe grew out of a struggle to integrate what for him were the clear demands of piety with the distinct demands of cosmological explanation.

  But Empedocles himself would not have recognised this as a description of his enterprise. He inherited an intellectual tradition in which truth about ultimate realities is a unique kind of truth precisely because, by its subject matter, it is truth about the divine. If the field of cosmology is, as such, a hallowed domain, cosmological methods as such must heed the demands of piety as well as (to us) the more strictly rational requirements of coherence and consistency. One consequence, apparent in Empedocles and in Parmenides before him (although cosmology is not Parmenides’ primary concern), is a methodological dependence on divine assistance. The preambles introducing Empedocles’ Muse and Parmenides’ tutelary goddesses (DK 31 B3 and B131; DK 28 B1) deserve philosophical as well as literary attention. Both philosopher-poets hark back to Hesiod’s invocation of the Muses in the Theogony: the singing daughters of Zeus, who himself is also audience and theme of their song. When singer and audience change, becoming Hesiod on one side and his human listeners on the other, the theme remains the same: but only because the Muses are now inspiring the singer, who must otherwise sink to a theme on his own plane. Piety entails the admission that only god unaided can fittingly celebrate god. And these Greek thinkers shared another intuition also familiar to us from the Bible: that piety requires hands and heart to be morally clean and pure. In the ancient Greek context this gave rise to the curious doctrine, which had a long history ahead of it, that those who scale th
e intellectual heights must be ethical paragons too.

  2. XENOPHANES

  Xenophanes thought systematically about nature and about god, but how these topics of his were connected we can only guess. His interest in the physical world is of a distinctly empirical cast. He speculates about the fundamental materials of things – water and earth, according to him (DK 21 B29; B33) – and he explains a wide range of phenomena in terms of clouds, which come from water.5 Yet it seems that he never in solemn metaphysical style spoke of the basic substances as all-encompassing or running through all (cf. Empedocles, DK 31 B17.32-34). Such relation as there was between his science and his theology may have consisted in the assumption that if, as Milesian philosophy was currently demonstrating, the use of reason can illuminate the workings of nature, then it can also bring better conclusions about the separate topic of the gods. Better, that is, than the views that simply lay to hand: popular notions stamped into the culture by cultic practices and by poetry and works of art. Science, moreover, could serve the cause of rational theology by providing naturalistic explanations of, for example, eclipses (generally regarded as portents) and St. Elmo’s fire and the rainbow (generally regarded as divine visitations; cf. DK 21 A35, A39, B32).

  Writing in verse in the genre known later as sillos, a vehicle for caustically humorous moralizing, Xenophanes declared:

  If oxen and horses and lions had hands

  and were able to draw with their hands and do the same things as men,

  horses would draw the shapes of gods to look like horses

  and oxen to look like oxen, and each would make the

  gods’ bodies have the same shape as they themselves had (B15).

  He also couched the point in terms of different races of men: the Ethopians’ gods are flat-nosed and dark, those of the Thracians red-haired and blue-eyed (B16; cf. B14).